Wine No More: The U.S. Government’s Coming Attack on Wine and How To Fight Back

The coming recommendations on wine in new Dietary Guidelines is going to change how wine is viewed and the wine industry better prepare.

What happens when the U.S. government recommends that the healthiest option is to not drink any wine and if you do choose to drink wine, that you consume no more than 2 drinks per week? What happens when this advice is disseminated from millions of points on the Internet?

This is the advice provided to Canadians by the Canadian government and it is the kind of advice on drinking wine that Dr. George Koop, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism suggested the U.S. Guidelines could mimic:

“I mean, they're not going to go up, I'm pretty sure. So, if [alcohol consumption guidelines] go in any direction, it would be toward Canada.”

Tomorrow will be the first meeting of the committee created to review alcohol consumption which will send a report to those who will be revising America’s dietary guidelines—including the same guidelines that, in 2020, suggested men limit their drinking to two drinks per day and women to one drink per day.

Among the questions this committee is charged with answering are the following:

1.  What is the relationship between alcohol consumption and growth, size, body composition, and risk of overweight and obesity?

2. What is the relationship between alcohol consumption and risk of certain types of cancer?

3. What is the relationship between alcohol consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease?

4. What is the relationship between alcohol consumption and neurocognitive health?

5. What is the relationship between alcohol consumption and risk of all-cause mortality?

Though this committee will not be making recommendations on what should be included about alcohol in the 2025-2030 dietary guidelines set to be released in 2025, their answers to the above questions will play a key role in informing the committee heading up the dietary guidelines development.

And don’t count on any industry perspective being relayed to this committee. There is a concerted effort to assure that anyone with even the slightest connection to the alcohol industry is let anywhere near the committee.

Here is what the U.S. 2020-2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines currently have to say about alcohol consumption:

Adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink, or to drink in moderation by limiting intake to 2 drinks or less in a day for men and 1 drink or less in a day for women, when alcohol is consumed. Drinking less is better for health than drinking more. There are some adults who should not drink alcohol, such as women who are pregnant.

This was the same advice that was given in the 2015-2020 dietary guidelines: “If alcohol is consumed, it should be in moderation—up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men—and only by adults of legal drinking age.”

The 2010-2015 guidelines were a little different:

“The consumption of alcohol can have beneficial or harmful effects, depending on the amount consumed, age, and other characteristics of the person consuming the alcohol. Alcohol consumption may have beneficial effects when consumed in moderation. Strong evidence from observational studies has shown that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Moderate alcohol consumption also is associated with reduced risk of all-cause mortality among middle-aged and older adults and may help to keep cognitive function intact with age. However, it is not recommended that anyone begin drinking or drink more frequently on the basis of potential health benefits because moderate alcohol intake also is associated with increased risk of breast cancer, violence, drowning, and injuries from falls and motor vehicle crashes.”

“Lower risk of cardiovascular disease”….”reduced risk of all-cause mortality”….”may help to keep cognitive function intact with age”.

Now, scroll back up and take a look at questions 3, 4, and 5 which will be examined by the committee advising the Dietary Guideline Committee on alcohol.

Additionally, consider that a year ago, the World Health Organization declared, “when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health.”

What are the odds that in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines, we will see a continuation of the advice that moderate wine consumption is two drinks a day for men and one drink per day for women? I’m accepting wagers on this question and am willing to give 10-1 odds to anyone who wants to bet the new guidelines will stay the same.

In fact, given the direction of advice on alcohol that we are seeing worldwide and in the United States, would it be any surprise if the coming 2025 Dietary Guidelines look something like this:

“There is no safe amount of alcohol consumption. Even drinking alcohol in small amounts can increase your health risks, including your risk of cancer. If you do choose to drink alcohol, limit your intake to 1-2 drinks per week. A healthy lifestyle does not include alcohol consumption.”

Now, back to the earlier question: What would advice from the U.S. government along these lines have on the wine industry? Let’s begin with the assumption that it will not lead to more people trying wine. Let’s also agree that it will not lead to increased wine consumption in the United States.

Let’s consider the impact of the news coverage of the advice in the coming 2025 Dietary Guidelines that you should not be drinking any wine if you are concerned with your health. That advice shows up “above the fold” in every newspaper and news website in the country. It shows up in the first 15 minutes of network news reports. It leads or is the second or third story at every cable news outlet in the country. Can we agree this kind of coverage will not increase consumption of wine?

We should also consider the impact that this advice will have when it is repeated on millions of websites—including every state government communication on health. Again, let’s assume this kind of massive messaging will not increase the consumption of wine.

These are the considerations that the wine industry should be pondering. And once they consider these issues they should begin to think how they are going to respond not just to the announcement that is coming, but to the actual impact of these new recommendations: less consumption of wine.

It’s not just the public’s awareness of these recommendations that will reduce the consumption of wine. It is these recommendations that will lead to calls for more dire warning labels to be mandated for wine. It will lead to advertising and promotional bans on wine. It will be the justification for new pricing rules for wine. And it will be one of the justifications that will be used by states to adopt. a .05 blood alcohol limit for DUI. All of these things, in turn, will further reduce wine consumption.

The wine industry can fight back against what’s coming by undertaking a collective effort to push back against some of the more highly speculative and outrageous claims being made against wine consumption. But in the end, this effort, while very helpful, is not going to convince folks that wine, among all other alcoholic beverages, possesses the kind of meaning and importance that we all know it does and has. Instead, there will need to be an effort to exalt the importance of the beverage.

Robert Mondavi wrote the following in 1989:

“We believe wine is the temperate, civilized, sacred, romantic mealtime beverage recommended in the Bible. It is a liquid food that has been part of civilization for 8,000 years. Wine has been praised for centuries by statesmen, scholars, poets, and philosophers. It has been used as a religious sacrament, as the primary beverage of choice for food, and as a source of pleasure and diversion. Wine is the natural beverage for every celebration:  the birth of a child, graduations, engagements, weddings, anniversaries, promotions, family gatherings, toasts between governments, and other festivities.“

This is called The Mondavi Defense. It makes no health claims. It doesn’t speak to the issue of wine’s benefits to our cardiovascular health. It doesn’t address wine’s impact on our cognitive health. It makes the case that wine is the essential beverage; the beverage that humanity has embraced for millennia. This is the message that the wine industry must adopt and spread like wildfire. It can be expressed in different ways. It can be formulated to meet different occasions and formats. But is going to be essential to the defense of wine and the wine industry as our government does all it can to convince Americans to avoid wine.